It gave him a few minutes to find control, so he didn’t embarrass himself.
As he leaned against the sink, he closed his eyes.
“Give me a sign,” he whispered to the powers that be, in hopes they’d hear his prayer and keep her with him.
He was putting all his faith in his beliefs.
They’d never let him down.
As he began whispering more, he heard the bathroom door creek open. When he turned, he didn’t know what the hell was going on.
It was Merry.
As if his words had conjured her, she was standing there and smiling at him.
“Uh, cher, this is the men’s room. I think you took a wrong turn.”
She closed the door, and locked it.
“I know where I am. I need you, Boone. I can’t stand not touching you,” she whispered, moving toward him.
“Miss Peyton,” he murmured as she raced the rest of the way, finally crashing into him.
Merry went into his frame, holding on for dear life. Her mouth sought his, and when he answered that need with longing of his own, she slipped further into love.
This was genuine peace, happiness, and adoration. The way he held her as if she was precious glass squeezed her heart.
He had this power over her, and she didn’t buy that it had anything to do with his religion, and a spell, and everything to do with the hypnotic gaze of his gorgeous eyes.
Boone turned her right on.
As she practically crawled up his body, Boone turned to sit her on the edge of the long sink. He couldn’t believe she was there with him, but he wasn’t going to turn her away.
He’d never turn Merry away.
She was his precious gift, and if they only had hours left together, he didn’t want to waste it.
“Touch me,” she begged, wanting to feel his body all over hers. She wanted to go back to the morgue smelling like this man’s cologne, skin, and anything else that was clinging to his skin.
She couldn’t get enough.
In all her life, she’d never felt compelled to belong to anyone. There was always a wall, but he’d come right through it. Keeping Boone out was nearly impossible.
He pulled free of her mouth and stared into her lavender eyes. “In here, Meredith?” he asked, making sure this was what she wanted. He’d take her on a park bench in the middle of a parade, but he wanted her to be sure she was happy with the choice.
“Yes, Boone, here.”
Well, if the lady wanted bathroom sex, she was going to get it. He began tugging at the lab coat and the sweater beneath. When he found her skin, he moaned at the pleasure of running his fingers over her soft flesh. She was like the loveliest of rose petals. He almost wanted to sniff her, as if he would a flower.
Then he realized she was that.
Merry was his sweet, fragrant blossom. He could search his whole life, and he’d never find anyone who could compare.
“Boone,” she whispered.
“Meredith, you’re my precious bloom. You come to life beneath my fingers, cher.”
Her heart kicked in her chest. As his large tan hands caressed her body, she couldn’t help but fall for him. When Boone touched her, it was with a reverence that had been missing from her life.
This was what she’d been craving.
And what she’d be losing as soon as the FBI pulled out of town.
There was no way she could stay, and she couldn’t ask him to come back. If she did, he’d suffer.
You can’t take the Native from the Rez—especially one who is so entrenched in his beliefs. While she thought Voodoo was poppycock, he didn’t. He wouldn’t be able to find a place to worship up North.
He’d be out of his element.
Boone would…
She moaned when his mouth found the swell of her breast. When he left little openmouthed kisses over her heart, she wanted to beg him to come with her.
It took everything she had to fight the urge.
“We have to be fast,” he said, lifting her mouth to meet his. “I want to take hours, but we can’t.”
“I like fast,” she said, finding the button at the top of his jeans. When she touched him, he shook.
Boone was hard and ready for her, and she’d never forget that this man wanted her.
He truly desired her—broken, damaged, and all.
Boone thanked the powers that be that Merry was in dress pants. Yanking them open, he lifted her to slide them off her hips. They came away easily, dropping to the floor.
When he glanced down, it was a memory he’d never forget. Merry was in a pretty pair of pink panties, and he was as hard as steel.
“Take me,” she begged. “Hurry.”
Boone watched her stroke him. Her hand mesmerized him as she slid it up and down his dick.
“Merry, I love you so much,” he admitted.
Tears filled her eyes. “I love you too. PLEASE don’t ever doubt that, Boone.”
He leaned into her, and when their mouths met in a frenetic kiss, he ripped the panties from her body.
She moaned.
He nearly went wild.
Picking her up, he held her legs in his hands. When she guided him into her body, they both broke the kiss to stare into each other’s eyes.
Blue met lavender, and in their gaze, emotions were shared. “Remember me,” she whispered. “Please never forget me.”
His heart hitched.
How could he?
She’d stolen his soul.
He’d mourn the loss of her for the rest of his life. “I will die loving you, Meredith. I promise. There won’t be a day that I don’t look at a gardenia and think about you.”
She attacked, her mouth devouring his in greedy bites. When he began moving in and out of her body, he nearly lost his mind.
“More,” he whispered. “I need all.”
She knew he wasn’t talking about the sex. In that moment, Merry gave him everything she had to put a bandage over the wound she’d inflicted on his heart.
She was going to leave him behind.
When she left, Merry was leaving her heart with him. There would never be another man quite like him.
Boone found that perfect angle, and with every stroke, he drove them closer to the edge. If this was going to be the final time he touched her, he wanted her always to know that he loved her.
As she gasped his name, he felt the end near. Driving into her one last time, she exploded apart. As she tumbled, his name was on her lips.
Boone couldn’t hold out.
He didn’t want to.
The scent of her skin, and the way her body milked his to release was far too wonderful to fight. Instead, he let himself tumble over the edge.
He poured into her.
Heart.
Soul.
Seed.
Then there was silence all around them as their breathing echoed off the bathroom walls.
He couldn’t do this anymore. He had to know that he fought with everything he had. Boone needed to know that he asked, pleaded, and begged her. If he didn’t, he’d never know if it would have worked.
“Merry, stay with me,” he whispered. “I need you to believe we’re meant to be. I never want you to leave my side. I want to be with you until the day I die.”
Tears filled her eyes and slid down her cheeks at his declaration.
“Boone, I can’t.”
He kissed them away even as he wanted to drop to his knees and plead. He didn’t care about his pride.
What good was it if he didn’t have Merry?
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, bringing her lips to his in a light kiss. “Please believe that.”
“I understand.”
Only she didn’t believe he did.
Where he was thinking she didn’t love him enough, she was sacrificing it all to keep him safe.
“Boone.”
He freed himself from her body. He couldn’t stay near her. His heart hurt far too much.
�
�We need to get back to the morgue. Your bosses are coming in, and they’ll need to hear what you’ve found.”
There was so much pain in his voice.
She was hurting him, and she hated every second of it.
“Boone.”
“I can’t, Merry. I just can’t. It hurts too much. That rejection is brutal.”
She understood since she was feeling that exact same pain in her chest. Only hers was self-inflicted.
They put themselves back together, one garment at a time.
When she nearly fell, trying to get back into her pants, he knelt and helped her. Her heart skipped in her chest when he glanced up at her. His eyes were haunted with the ghosts of what would never be.
He was angry with her, but he still…
He was still gentle.
She needed a miracle. Merry needed one in the worst possible way. The last person she wanted to wound was this man. When he made sure she wasn’t a disheveled mess, she wanted to weep.
“Don’t worry, cher. I can see it in your beautiful eyes. What’s meant to be will happen. It’s out of our hands. The universe already has its plan, and we’re here to watch it play out.”
She touched his cheek with her palm, and he turned his face to kiss it.
That one motion said it all.
For him, it was his soul leaving him.
For her, it was a goodbye of sorts. This would be their last moments together. She just knew it to her core. She was going to go back and Derek was going to kill her. She didn’t want Boone to see that. She didn’t want him to have to live through that.
She loved him too much.
Boone unlocked the door and peeked out to make sure the coast was clear. Then he waited for her to leave.
“Aren’t you coming?” she asked.
He stared at her. “I need some time.”
She saw the pain as he tried to hide it. When he ran his hands through his hair in frustration, she knew he was working through that too.
“I’m so sorry, Boone.”
Yeah, so was he. Now he needed to work on a plan.
He needed to stay in her life.
He just had to figure out how.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
Morgue
When she strolled in, the entire team was there, and they were busily working on the trace they’d pulled. They were hustling through their work, and that made her proud.
To get their attention, she whistled.
They all looked up, including her ME.
“Christopher.”
He noticed that she wasn’t smiling.
Oh, boy.
Here it came.
“Are you going to kick my ass for punching Ethan or fire me for assaulting the Deputy Director?”
She headed his way, not answering him.
When she stood in front of her best friend, he looked ready to flinch if she moved. It made her smile.
“I owe you this,” she said, tugging him forward and kissing him on the lips.
Tony dropped a tray as he watched in shock. Was his boss, their friend, kissing a man who wasn’t her husband in the morgue?
It was the end of the world as they knew it.
This was…
Crazy.
When she pulled away from him, Chris was grinning. He certainly hadn’t expected that, and it wasn’t lost on him that it absolutely didn’t turn him on in the least.
It was like kissing his…sister.
He started laughing, but most of it was because Tony was staring back and forth between them, as was the rest of the lab staff.
It was amusing.
“I missed you too, Lyzee,” he said, grinning wickedly.
“If you save the girl, you get a kiss in the morgue. Thank you for kicking my husband’s ass.”
Ethan laughed. “It was one punch. I’d like to go on the record and say my ass wasn’t really kicked—mostly my stupidity.”
Tony rushed at her. “I saved you half my candy bar. Does that count?” he asked. “You look really hungry. I saved you from starving!”
Chris snorted. He knew their friend was trying to patch up the stress in their family.
It was working.
“Awwww, Tony,” she said moving toward him. When he closed his eyes, she stole the candy bar and headed back toward her husbands’ sides.
“Come on!” Tony objected. “That’s not fair!”
She laughed all the way.
Yeah, thanks to her friends, she was already feeling a million times better.
“Okay, team, you called me here, so dazzle me.”
Chris didn’t see Merry, so he was going to buy her some time. “We did, but Merry took a break for a few minutes. She’s burning the candle at both ends. I do have the autopsy results, as does Doctor Perette.”
“Hit me with them.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Daphne was indeed killed by the same man, and if I had her liver, I could give you TOD. Since she wasn’t even starting to rigor, I can tell you likely an hour or ninety minutes at the max. She was still warm.”
Callen made notes. “So the killer took her life, transported her, and then she was found by the priestess?”
“Yep. It was fast.”
Well, that explained the doorbell. The killer wanted them to find her.
“What about the bite?”
“There was no saliva, but we found a little trace, and Merry is still running that. Mass spec is running twenty-four seven, and it’s not as flash as ours back at the Hoover building. Translation—we’re running on outdated equipment.”
“Basically, you’re telling me to chill out and stop riding your ass.”
He knew this whole time they’d been there, she’d been taking it easy on them. Elizabeth was off her game, and Chris knew the men in her life, and him, were the reason.
“Can I have some of your candy bar?”
She tossed him the last piece, and he caught it in the air. When she shared, Tony pointed accusingly at her.
“You’re playing favorites. That sucks. You kiss him, and you give him my damn candy bar? Just pull the dagger from my heart, why don’t you?”
She snorted at his dramatics, especially when he winked at her. Elizabeth was damn lucky to have these kinds of friends in her life.
“What else, Christopher?”
“I went back over Victoria Paul, and I found some stuff in her hair. We added it to Merry’s work load, and you should have something by tomorrow.”
“Where are my agents?”
Ethan texted them, and they strolled in from the lounge. They were working on their tablets.
“What have you found?”
“We can say that Kaleb Meeks, Marie Babineaux, Mistress Bella Rose, and Steven Price have nothing connecting them to the dead women or the one man. We’ve crossed everything from IRS to financial records. We can’t find anything. None of the victims paid for a tour, a Voodoo spell, or anything even near their shops.”
She listened to Johanna as Merry wandered into the room. She noticed her tech looked like shit.
That was a bad sign.
She knew when love went wrong it was hell on your personal life. Look at this mess. She’d never been so distracted like she was in New Orleans.
“Ma’am, unfortunately, in this case, where there’s no smoke, there’s no fire.”
She got it.
This whole case was a ginormous clusterfuck.
“Run everyone else attached to this case, or who we’ve come across. Leave no stone unturned. Those women connect to the pimp, and that’s a huge flag. It’s our only connection in this whole case, so we’ll run with it. Remember what happens when you miss the obvious?” she asked.
They nodded. There was no way they were letting that happen. She’d let them live, but her magnanimous mood could pull a three-sixty in a heartbeat.
“Don’t miss it again.”
She looked around the room. “Where’s the detective?” Elizabeth asked
.
“He’s on his way back in,” Merry offered. “He stepped out for a break.”
She let it slide, even if she didn’t buy it for a second. There was trouble in ‘The Big Easy’. You’d have to be blind not to see it.
“Does anyone know if his partner found the pimp? I really want to interview him.”
They all shook their heads.
“I can text the detectives for you, Director,” Doctor Perette offered. “We work together all the time, and I frequently work at night with them.”
The man was being helpful.
He was either afraid, or he was enjoying the circus at their expense.
“Callen will, and then you can tell me about the spare body you picked up, but first,” she said, pointing at her agents. “Find me that pimp. Cross him with police records and find out when he was arrested, where he lives, and if he’s hiding from me. If we have to interview cops who arrested him, get me their names. Someone has to know where he’s hiding. All snakes have a hole they head to when the heat is on.”
They got to work.
“Doctor, give me all you have.”
“Very well, Director. Our victim, Kaleb Meeks, age thirty two…”
She stopped him. “Cut to the chase. I’m not filling out the paperwork to get him a tombstone. I want the details, and I wanted them four hours ago. Got it?”
Her tech team grinned.
The bitch was back.
“Shut it, I never left, so don’t even think it.”
The doctor continued when she pointed at him.
“Meeks had the same poison in his system that your team found on the webbing outside his home. We can postulate that from the weather reports, and how it rained the day before he was killed, that he’d done the webbing on that same day.”
She processed the information.
“Okay, so you’re thinking that he did the webbing, wandered into the house, sat down to have a sandwich, and boom! He died.”
“Yes.”
“What day is TOD, Chris?”
“Tuesday last week.”
She walked back and forth, processing what her team had told her.
Something felt off.
“I didn’t see the scene. Do we have pictures ready to go?” she asked.
Tony pulled them up.
Blood Shall Run (An FBI Romance Thriller Book 15) Page 53